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Originally published on October 14, 2010
Mrs. Socks nominated Mrs. Octopus’ post about pre-wedding weight loss for the Weddingbee “Helpful Series.” Mrs. Socks writes, “Octo’s post about pre-wedding weight loss was also SUCH a good one with great perspective.”
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So, disclaimer: I’m going to write about how I lost some weight before the wedding in this post. I totally do not want to reinforce that wedding industry pressure that all brides need to lose weight for their weddings. My diet and exercise efforts were kinda necessary for me (as you’ll see below), but it’s certainly not necessary for everybody! Okay, that’s it. I just wanted to add a little prologue so this post doesn’t come off like one of those incredibly annoying Facebook ads that stop just short of “Stop Eating, You Giant Fat Bride.”
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I’ve never been the type to worry excessively about my weight. This tendency is certainly helped by the fact that I’m naturally a fairly thin person, and I don’t usually struggle to keep my weight stable. My mental attitude about my weight held true throughout most of our engagement. I had some vague thoughts and plans about wanting to look my best, but I felt pretty casual about it all. My general health philosophy is to make an overall habit of eating nutritious, non-processed food, to make a reasonable effort to exercise, and not to worry about it much beyond that.
You may recall that, for most of this year, I was in graduate school. I bought my wedding dress the summer before my master’s degree program began, and then, over the course of that master’s degree program, gained maybe…six pounds? Seven? Not just a teeny blip on the scale, but nothing really significant, either. It was mostly due to the fact that I was so busy with school that I barely exercised, and that I probably was a bit too enthusiastic about patronizing local businesses. Anyway, I noticed the weight gain, but was not particularly worried about it.
Then, in July, I made a trip to Pittsburgh, and I tried on my wedding dress for the first time since I’d bought it. And—yikes—it barely fit.
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DaraR is selling a fascinator with ostrich feather accents. She’s asking $50.
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While reading this post, you may question my choice of title…but stick it out, OK?
It was an average fall day…one of my final summer Fridays* of the year. The sun was shining and there were just over two hours until I planned to spend my afternoon wandering the Philadelphia streets for a bit. (I really wanted a late lunch from the Guapos Taco truck.)
Where my brain was / Image via design-phan
As I was imagining my delicious Mexican snack, my phone buzzed on the desk, listing “Jen from Kimmel Center” as the caller. I picked up and cheerily said, “Hi Jen—happy Friday!” Her response did not seem as peppy, and when she mentioned that her colleague was with her on the call, I got a strange feeling. However, I did not expect what she said to me:
“Miss Turkey, we’re sorry to tell you that we’re no longer going to be able to hold your wedding at the Kimmel Center on May XX, 2012.”
Cue tires screaching, glass breaking, lightning striking…WHAT???
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When I first went dress shopping I had already decided that I didn’t want a veil. Why, you may ask, did I make this decision? Well, quite honestly, I think the concept behind a veil is just plain weird. According to Wikipedia, “veils covering the hair and face became a symbolic reference to the virginity of the bride,” and let’s face it, Mr Elk and I have been living together for almost 4 years—that ship sailed a long time ago. (I know a white dress is supposed to do the same, but mine is definitely not pure white—it’s got a dark ivory underlay.) Moreover, stores try to charge at least 100 dollars (and up to thousands!) for a piece of fabric that covers your face for all of a 25 minute ceremony.
While I had made my decision regarding veils, it by no means made me immune to their beauty. I started seeing pictures of gorgeous brides in flowing veils, and began to wonder whether I had made my decision prematurely.
I mean, could this photo be any more beautiful?
image via Snippet and Ink/ photo by Aaron Delesie
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All-Inclusion Invitation Suites
“Make an elegant invitation statement without the fuss. Stylish invitation sets with matching envelopes, reception and response cards included.”
I have a confession: I love wedding registries. Am I alone in that feeling?
When I get an invitation to a wedding, I can’t wait to look up the couple’s registry. You can sometimes tell a lot about a couple by these lists. There are those who don’t have homes yet who register for all the necessities like appliances, towels, and sheets. There are those who already have homes who register for fun things like camping gear and sporting goods. There are the traditionalists who have china and crystal on their lists. Then, there are the couples whose lists are a delightfully random collection of items. I can just imagine these people at one of those “sip and shop” events that stores like Crate & Barrel or Macy’s put on to get couples in the mood the register. After a glass or two of champagne, I picture them having a grand time running all over the store, aiming the registry gun at anything and everything.
The registry gun / Photo by Miss Mink
You’d think that my affinity for shopping from a registry would mean I was eager to set ours up. I wasn’t.
At first, I didn’t want to register.
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The more I looked at blogs like Style Me Pretty and Ruffled…the more I was set on having a vintage-themed wedding and vintage-themed tablescapes. I literally think I spent a good 15 hours Googling various combinations of “vintage wedding table” and poring through images. As I showed you all previously, we had narrowed down our “extra centerpiece items” to two choices: vintage books or vintage teapots/china. Which did we choose? Drumroll, please!
Image via Business Insider
We went with the vintage teapots/china.
Create the honeymoon of your dreams.
As I may have admitted a time or two before, I’m a pretty type-A girl. I crave organization and often require a wealth of information before making a big decision. Our honeymoon planning was no different. I originally asked Mr. Hawk to take charge and be the head planner for our honeymoon plans; however, when he didn’t seem to be doing a lot of research, I quickly stepped in (and pretty much took over).
I scoured Trip Advisor for reviews and rankings (all while taking copious notes, of course). After a few months of off and on research, Mr. Hawk and I finally sat down over the weekend to make some concrete decisions. We’ve decided to go to Punta Cana, DR. Woo hoo! We will be staying at an all-inclusive resort, in the adult-only club area. I have never stayed at an all-inclusive resort before, but I am really looking forward to it. I like the idea of knowing what we’re paying up-front, and I think knowing all our meals and drinks are taken care of will make for a less-stressful vacation.
I have a confession…I love flowers at weddings. I love that they add a scent (our strongest sensory memory, by the way!) and color to the decor palate. I know that they only last a few days and they tend to be expensive, but I can’t help it. I think they are beautiful.
On the other hand, there are some non-floral centerpieces out there that I think are incredibly creative and chic. Some of these options are so romantic and beautiful they just might be enough to sway me in the “non- floral” direction.
This first one is all about setting a mood. It’s simple but still creates a unique touch with all the romantic candlelight.
Photo by Bliss Photography / designed by NLC Productions and La Fete / Image via Style Me Pretty
The second is all about texture. This idea uses a stump and tapered candles wrapped in a variety of twine to create interest in a natural looking centerpiece (that isn’t made of flowers)!
I have seen some pretty amazing card boxes here on Weddingbee and around the internet. Mine probably isn’t one of them, however it’s not too bad on the eyes and will serve its purpose just fine. We bought a printed cardboard box and just had to fold it into shape and tie a bow around it. It’s substantially larger than what we had imagined, but it’s OK because newlyweds are supposed to be optimistic, right?
Total cost of project: $3
Once again I have left you hanging—my bad. I explained my excitement of getting the phone call that my dress had arrived, but then I never shared photos of me in my dress. Granted, I shared photos of the sample gown, which luckily was remarkably similar to the final product, but for the sake of full disclosure here is a quick recap of the fashion show I had when my family came in town last month.
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| Image via The Daily Puppy |
I must say, it was a very surreal feeling to be slipping into my dress.
And Miss Wallaroo lived happily ever after…
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Alternate title: Mr. Aardvark Rocks.
So, you may have noticed I was MIA last week, or maybe you didn’t notice because of all the other amazing bees posting amazing posts. Either way, I was on a family vacation with Mama and Step-dad Aardvark, as well as Mama Aardvark’s parents. We were visiting my uncle in France. The trip was amazing; it was a great chance to spend time catching up with family we hadn’t seen in awhile and see the beautiful Alps and countryside. We ate amazing food, we drank (LOTS of) amazing wine, and we met some of the most fantastic people.
That being said, everyone was looking forward to a little “me time” and a quiet Sunday after our Saturday flight home. Fate had other plans. Apparently there was/is a huge strike going on and our flight out of Lyon (along with all the other flights) was canceled. Of course, being in our vacation bliss, we hadn’t been watching or reading the news and went to the airport, returned our rental car, and only then realized we were in a pickle.
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So the paper-store route did not work out, and I was headed down the custom path. I started Googling away for “custom invitations Philly” and found that, in the area, there seemed to be a lot of options…all with great reputations. I looked at all their samples, blogs, client commentary, etc. However, I kept going back to the website of one—Two Paperdolls.
Image via Two Paperdolls
Photos like the one above were drawing me in—so pretty! So coordinated! I couldn’t resist scheduling an appointment.
Without corrective lenses, Mr. Mole and I are both blind as…well, moles. We’ve both been wearing glasses since middle school. Mr. Mole even underwent LASIK surgery as an adult so his lenses no longer look like the bottom of Coke (or, Mr. Mole’s preferred soda, Pepsi) bottles. Between the two of us, we own 10 pairs of prescription glasses and sunglasses and a large stash of disposable contact lenses.
As such, Mr. Mole and I have been faced with two questions: Will we wear glasses on our wedding day? If so, which glasses will we wear?
We ended up taking some photos to test out the different looks. I quickly pulled my hair back to approximate a wedding day do. (My hair is now long enough to make a tiny ponytail, which means it’s time for another pre-wedding chop!)
Clearly, the prescription sunglasses didn’t make the final photo array cut
This is the final post in my Sweet Suite series. I even debated if this post was necessary but I remembered how useful I found these types of posts when I was starting to brainstorm the process of how to create our invitations.
I had an overall vision of how I wanted our invitations to look when they were put all together, including the map insert, the twine and the mini-moo. Translated to words, it was like this: the invitation would be the largest element, the RSVP postcard would be the middle piece and our map/directions card would be the smallest. I had originally envisioned the map and directions on one side and a bit bigger than the RSVP, but it just didn’t work out that way. I printed a ton of samples until I got the sizing right, which ended up being two invitations per page and four map/directions per page. My steps will begin after the printing step, which is an obvious beginning step.
Step 1:
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